Back in the 70s the manager of a pub in Hackney Road, east London (The Queens, I seem to recall – now a sari shop or a sports shoe wholesaler or somesuch), leaned close and, through the crashing wall of Philadelphia Sound being pumped by DJ Blossom (I kid you not), shouted something about under-age drinkers.
He was complaining that the Old Bill didn’t seem to understand that he couldn’t possibly check everyone’s ID or the place would grind to a halt. He had a point; the pub was heaving – a popular venue on the regular Friday and Saturday night circuit that attracted a rampaging horde of young, sweaty, cashed-up boozers.
“I mean, look at them,” he complained. “How would you know who’s over 18 and who’s not? I’d go out of business if I had to vet them all.”
Again, he had a point. Or so I thought at the time. And it would have been a little churlish to argue with him; after all, I’d only just turned 16.
So there are some advantages to owning a face like mine; never being asked for ID (somewhat useless after 18 but still), and never being mugged. I suspect would-be attackers take one look at my mush and think someone’s beaten them to it.
Disadvantages include the scars of spotty adolescence, and being followed around department stores. Even now, in grey-haired mellow middle-age the store detective or security guard can be counted upon to tag along at a discreet distance, making sure I don’t make off with the Nivea.
Yesterday, though, new depths were plumbed in Paris’s Latin Quarter where I took a stroll from Place St Michel to the Pantheon, the jardin du Luxembourg, Eglise St Sulpice and back, a combination of two ‘Best Neighbourhood Walks’ ripped out of a guide book. (see new pic gallery for some idea of the places.)
Much of this area is pretty familiar now, living as we do only a few minutes’ walk away, but I followed the route anyway and discovered that the Rue du Chat Qui Peche (street of the cat who fishes) claims to be one of the narrowest alleyways in the city. It’s a romantic name for a grimy grey gap between two buildings but that’s French for you – the only language that makes faeces sexy. Go on, say it: “Merde.”
Step 3 on the itinerary is the eglise St Severin, a medieval church built in the 13th century and then rebuilt in the 15th. Inside it’s the usual hushed silence, grey stone and stained glass – nice enough but not a pinch on Notre Dame or the spooky church behind our apartments. A statue of someone who looks like V from V For Vendetta (certainly not St Severin, a hermit from the 6th century also known as The Solitary) stands in one corner with a baby on one arm and a little kid gazing up adoringly at him from under the other. Do that today and, whoever he is, his feet wouldn’t touch the floor until the court appearance.
In another corner of the church I passed a large man who had just come out of a little office. Unlike our spooky church, where the guardians are nuns and surprisingly young and good-looking monks, this chap was (obviously) a church official in mufti.
I know this because he looked like a store detective. He acted like one, too, following me around at the usual discreet distance, just in case. This I have come to expect in Boots or HMV – but IN A CHURCH? What did he think I was going to slip into my backpack? A two-metre crucifix with a dead bloke hanging off it?
I left in a bit of a huff, dignity intact but feeling a little, well, saintly.
A LITTLE later in the day, at the grander St Sulpice church in St Germain des Pres (famous for Delacroix paintings and, supposedly, scenes from the Da Vinci Code movie), I encountered another one of the glass boxes that seem to have taken over from your common or garden confessional.
Not being Catholic I have never partaken of this particular vice but it does seem odd doing the whole thing in view of the public. Isn’t discretion part of the deal? And they look disturbingly like those bizarre smokers’ boxes you find at airports.
Anyway, there was a priest in there in his finery and, kneeling before him on the other side of a small desk, was a nun. And both of them were sucking blissfully on Marlboro Lights ... ha-ha-ha, just kidding.
But it did make me wonder; what does a nun have to confess? I stepped on a pavement crack? She was wearing a sort of unflattering beige ensemble with the whole wimple kit and caboodle and, to me at least, oddly incongruous Adidas trainers.
Was that it then? “Forgive me, Father, for I have taken up running.”
To which he would reply: ”Your penance is three Hail Marys and a New York Marathon.”
